Create a time lapse with Olympus cameras. Easy Peasy.

Time lapse videos are all over the interwebs. And why not? They are very effective - usually quite short - video clips that cleverly show the passage of a long period of time in a short space. Sometimes they can be very long periods of time. You know the ones - time lapses of seeds germinating into flowers, or healthy fruit decaying into fungi (just do a Goggle search).

Canon TC80-N3. 'Only' $320 NZ!

In the 'good-old-days', you needed some fairly special kit to create time lapses. This usually consisted of an 'Intervalometer' that you would plug into the camera so that the shutter could be timed and controlled remotely. Not surprisingly, these specialist bits of kit weren't cheap.

For example, the Canon TC80 Intervalometer that would work for my previous Canon gear is 'only' $320.00NZ! Crikey! No wonder time lapse photography was quite a niche area. Although with the proliferation of Chinese products flooding the camera market nowadays, these have come down considerably in price and are still a viable option if required.

My last Canon camera, the 50D, was also able to be 'hacked' so that it could do time lapse shooting from the menu. By downloading and installing some extra software onto a memory card, you could add extra features to the 50D (even video) which included a built-in intervalometer. These firmware 'upgrades' are made by a company called Magic Lantern, and can be used to 'unlock' all sorts of features and upgrades to existing cameras. But beware. They are, of course, not recommended by the manufacturer, and if anything were to go wrong with your camera with this 'upgrade' installed, it would void any existing warranty.

My first time lapse was achieved through using the Magic Lantern upgrade on my 50D, but it still felt a bit clunky in operation, and I was never really comfortable with hacking a camera - even an old one well out of warranty. So my foray into time lapse never went very far. If you are interested, I documented the occasion on my Youtube channel - here. 

Soon after shooting that video and time lapse, I sold the 50D and eventually made the move back to micro four thirds and the Olympus OM-D's (via Fujifilm). The Canon 50D was released in 2008 - the Olympus OM-D E-M10 in 2014. A lot had moved on in the intervening 6 years between models (mirrorless technology not withstanding), and this saw manufacturers adding a lot of features that had traditionally been left out of cameras. And yes, this included a built-in intervalometer mode. 

Olympus included a Time Lapse setting with the OM-D EM-1, and all subsequent OM-D's have this feature (among others) built-in. On the right you can see the relevant screens that allow you to access the Time Lapse mode on the OM-D E-M10 - but it should be very similar (or identical) for other models.

Shooting Menu 2 is where you turn the Time Lapse function 'On' (it is set to OFF by default). Turning it On will then allow you to access the Time Lapse settings screen, where you can change Frame (how many images you want the camera to shoot), Start Waiting Time (when you want the camera to start), Interval Time (the time between each shot), and Time Lapse Movie (whether you want the camera to automatically create an AVI movie from the shots taken - or not).

The E-M10 only has the one Time Lapse video setting: HD 1280x720 @ 10fps. The E-M1 and subsequent models lets you choose the video quality of the camera-generated movie from 4k down to HD, at various frames-per-second.

I think this is a fantastic option, and really lets you create a Time lapse movie with the absolute minimum of fuss and effort. You can create a video with all of the files you've shot later on in Photoshop, or video editing software - but it's a whole lot simpler to let the camera do it for you on-the-spot. It does a great job of it too - as long as you follow a few simple time lapse 'rules'.

The Greymouth 'Barber'. OM-D E-M1 with Zuiko 12-50mm EZ. f/5.6 @ 1/2500th, ISO 200 

Firstly, set the camera up on a tripod. Yeah, I know - duh! Pretty obvious if you're going to take hundreds of images and you want them all to have the same composition. Although you can do a moving time lapse with a video slider - on a tripod. But I digress. For now, let's just stick to a single composition. And remember, if the camera is on a stable tripod, you can turn IS (image stabilising) off.

Then you should set the camera into full manual - and this includes choosing a white balance. Don't leave anything on auto if you want image number 1 to be consistent with image number 600! Set the exposure, white balance, and focus all manually. That way the camera won't get fooled into making automatic changes in colour, focus or exposure throughout the series of images. 10 seconds of time lapse video can take 10 minutes of shooting in 'real time', and a lot can change over ten minutes. So full manual control is the answer to consistent colour and focus throughout your time lapse video.

All you need to decide now is what duration you want between images, how many shots you want for the time lapse, and what that will mean for the length of the resulting video. Once again the Olympus OM-D cameras make this super simple for you. If you have chosen to let the camera create a video for you afterwards (why wouldn't you), then a handy time-stamp indicator appears at the bottom right of the screen to let you know how long the resulting video file will be. If, however, you decide to create a video yourself later on (and you still can, even if the camera creates one for you), then it's pretty easy to calculate.

For example; if you choose to shoot 300 images, every 2 seconds, it will take 10 minutes to shoot. 300 x 2 seconds = 600 seconds. 600 seconds divided by 60 (60 seconds per minute) = 10 minutes of shooting time. To halve the time it takes to shoot, simply take an image every second (rather than every 2 seconds), and it will now take 5 minutes to shoot 300 frames.

Then, if your final video frame rate is 15fps, divide the total number of shots taken (300 in our case), by the frames per second rate, to come up with the eventual video time. So, 300 divided by 15 = 20. Hence, your final time lapse video will be 20 seconds long. 

As I said earlier, if all this math is a bit too much, don't worry. The Olympus OM-D E-M1 camera (and subsequent OM-D's) does all the calculations for you.

Above is the final time lapse, shot with all the numbers described above. 300 images, taken at 2 second intervals, with a final camera-generated 15fps FHD video.

One final word about shooting time lapses. If you are going to let the camera create the video file for you, and you don't want/need the resulting 300 images, then shoot in jpeg and simply dump the images later and keep the video file. If, however, you want ultimate control and will be creating your own video afterwards, then shoot in RAW. You will then be able to process one of the RAW files in Lightroom, and sync the edit across all the other 299 images for consistency. I've done this before, but now I keep it as simple as possible, shoot jpeg, and let the camera create the video for me. Up to you...

Whichever way you choose to go about it, there's no doubt that the process got a whole lot easier when cameras like the OM-D E-M1 (and others from different manufacturer's) included a time lapse feature built-into the software. It really is easy-peasy.